Adulting - #15 Eating Disorders & Disordered Eating with @rhitrition

Episode Date: August 26, 2018

In this weeks episode I speak to Rhiannon Lambert, who is a registered associate nutritionist, about eating disorders, disordered eating, social media and lots more. Please do reach out to a doctor or registered healthcare professional if you are suffering in any of the ways we discussed xxx Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly. Hi guys, welcome to Adulting. This is the podcast where I try to figure out how to grow up in this very confusing world. The plane's literally just gone over us, great times. And today I am joined by Rhiannon. Hello everybody. So you might know Rhiannon from Instagram or from seeing on the news. She is Re-Trition on Instagram. I am, yes. And she is a nutritionist. Do you want to tell us a bit about yourself?

Yeah. So I'm a registered associate nutritionist. That basically means that I have a governing body that checks what I do. So I think there's a bit of confusion around the word nutritionist because it's not a protected title. It means I actually have a code of conduct. I have ethics. I have a few degrees, things that mean I hopefully know what I'm talking about but um my nutrition kind of handle and world is called retrition I merged Rhiannon with the

word nutrition and created a kind of my own real take on it I suppose yeah it's so fab and I've been following re for a bit now and I kind of remember finding her and I was like oh finally there's somebody who kind of knows what they're talking about um but the reason I wanted to have her on today was one of the biggest requests I got from mostly young women is asking me to talk about eating disorders and what they are dispelling a few myths and also maybe just to give a bit more background into understanding it so yeah I mean I think the subject of eating disorders is obviously a hugely complex and misunderstood one. Firstly, my three areas of nutrition are eating disorders, sports, nutrition, and weight management. So I did a degree, first of all, in overall nutrition. My master's was actually specializing in obesity. And then from that,

I went to do a master practitioner in eating disorders and psychological behaviors because an eating disorder is a mental health illness and I think that's what people misunderstand the most yeah I think a lot of people like young girls who've reached out to me said that the misconception in the media and the misuse of the word kind of perpetuates the idea that it's all about being skinny but actually as as you say, it's a mental illness. It's not just kind of wanting to be on a constant diet. No. And I think also it's not a choice. People don't choose to wake up one day and have an eating disorder. And there's a big difference. I should also reiterate between disordered eating behaviors and an actual eating disorder. So there's different criteria and some of the criteria that

people will assess an eating disorder on. And that's not my job role. That would be from a doctor or a psychiatrist that specializes in the field on if you're preoccupied with thoughts of shape or weight to the point where it's getting in the way of your everyday life. All you can think about is the food. And the second one, a complete fear of weight gain body dysmorphia lots of different characteristics but an eating disorder is also very different so even though there's different categories like everyone's probably heard listening of anorexia or bulimia but there's also lots of other different subcategories within that and some people can cross into many different ones I think what's interesting growing, I definitely had a disordered relationship with food.

I wouldn't say I had an eating disorder, but I definitely was disordered. And I think a lot of girls in my generation, and in fact, probably all generations, went through periods of their life where food really did actually control how you looked at life. I know that when I was younger,

it was kind of like the heroin chic, Effie from Skins, really, really skinny look that everyone was going for. But then now it's not there's now like eating disorders called orthorexia is it well yeah um yes unfortunately it's not clinically recognized as a term yet however i think it's only a matter of time before it's potentially going that way so orthorexia the word ortho comes from the greek word pure and um a kind of phase on Instagram and social media developed

called clean eating which is heavily linked towards orthorexia often coming out of an eating disorder like anorexia a very common recovery path route is orthorexia so an obsession with eating very clean foods not really using any sauces perhaps one person, this may be even a fear of having water that isn't filtered. It could be they don't want any colorful vegetables apart from green because of the amount of natural sugars in it. It can derive in many shapes or forms, but that's also a form of immense restriction. Yeah. And I think when you're talking about that, that's also starting to think about what people need to realize is it is a psychological illness much in the same way that like obsessive compulsive disorder is which it's not kind of like a jokey thing to throw around and be like oh I'm so OCD or like we were talking

about just earlier Kim Kardashian stories the other day where her sisters were going you look so anorexic it's just I'm really surprised now in 2018 because I think a lot of people are more aware but I think that's a term maybe when we were younger I used to say like oh my god you look so tiny you look so skinny I think those are those are words and adjectives we need to stop totally I think the language that we use to describe things is really worrying and with eating disorders especially obviously like we said before everybody has a relationship with food that's something that I believe in so strongly it's something I talked about in my TEDx talk. And it's the fact that psychology

and nutrition work together. And often it's not about the food itself. It's about other things that are keeping a person trapped. It's a coping mechanism in that point in time. But for some, it can be so severely dangerous. It can be so much more. In fact, I pulled up a lot of statistics. And if you're looking at eating disorders, I mean, the research suggests that around 46% of anorexia patients fully recover only. So 33% improving and 20% will remain chronically ill. And when I say chronically, that means forever. It's also the highest incidence of death. And this is a very morbid kind of subject to approach but i think it's important that we don't throw around language like this because for some people this is a condition they'll live with for their entire lives yeah and that's huge because i think

exactly people in the media what's the danger is especially with social media and people like kim kardashian being so massively publicized is that whilst we're in kind of the health and wellness industry we think we're reaching a big audience but really outside of our echo chamber there's so many voices and so many magazines still publicating fake news and things and and for instance we've both spoken about the appetite suppressing lollipops oh yes the detox teas and the diet pills and how do you think that's impacting oh it's it's a very very scary environment it's almost like we're encouraging or rewarding people for restricting their food intake as if you're not being a healthy human unless you're restricting and trying to achieve a smaller body

shape in fact there's a big problem this all stems down to society's image of what is an ideal shape yeah you know what does the media say we should all look like? And actually that's ridiculous. It's absurd because we're all completely unique. One body shape cannot be right for everyone. One size, one number. And this is where things like appetite suppressants encourage an extremely unhealthy relationship with food. And it preys on the vulnerable. And I'm sure we all know, or anyone listening will know somebody out there that's going through a difficult time and probably potentially they would see

something advertised by their favorite celebrity and think yep if it works for them it'll work for me yeah and I also think the more sinister edge towards our appetite suppressants and things like that is it's encouraging kind of gluttony without consequence it's quite like a consumerist idea it's like you can eat as much as you want yeah and you're not going to get fat as if fat is the ultimate worst thing but this is happening at the same time as we have like starvation and i know so many and i think that's where it starts rather than encouraging people to see food as a benefit it's like it's it's villainizing food again totally and i think we're very very fortunate in the Western

world or the society that we live in and hopefully everybody listening and that we have access to fresh fruit, vegetables, a variety of different sources of food from around the world. And ultimately, if you allow yourself research suggests an enjoyed item of food, you're less likely to binge on it. So what happens when we go for a process of denying ourselves something we create a black or white mindset so a different thought process where if you can't have something before you know it we've all been there yeah you want it and then you try and restrict it again and this this also happens in fad diets regularly yes and encourages what i call a binge restrict cycle yeah it's like the elastic band you pull it pull it and then it snaps yeah and the other interesting thing which i've only started to learn about more recently is

this uh the moral worth that we put on foods so we kind of deem which is probably tied into the cleanliness thing but we deem certain foods more moral than others and then we shame certain people for eating certain things but there's so many layers that play into someone's diet it's not just whether or not they're aware about nutritional healthy it's their socioeconomic background totally culture religion and and i remember someone commented a really intelligent girl who follows me she's amazing once wrote something like um if you're from a very lower socioeconomic background you don't you can't buy your kids a holiday you can't take them to disneyland france but can't buy them clothes you might be able to afford them fish and chips exactly and if that's your luxury item it doesn't matter if that's unhealthy yeah and so this is where it's

really difficult for people to be shaming people for their weight while simultaneously looking at it from a very different angle i think weight shaming is a whole other kettle of fish altogether it's a complete other kind of subject but that in itself can of course lead to eating disorders. You can be anorexic and be overweight. And that's the misconception around it. Like you just said, that was someone's treat. No food is worthless. Every food has a place. I mean, if you're looking at nutrition, this is quite an interesting fact, chips have more vitamin C than a potato. Oh, that's amazing. And that's because of the way the chip is cooked so if you're looking that's the first thing i learned in my lectures at university and i remember being

like what that's mental but little things like for somebody chips might be their only source of vitamin c that week and we have to really start thinking about individual differences and the reality of the situation and small changes can make big differences yeah and I think that's really important to point out that someone who you know just because it's it's going by the way things look it's much in the same way just because someone looks very slim and very athletic it does not mean that they eat a healthy diet or are healthy in their lifestyle and I remember much in the same way when I was younger I used to sometimes make myself sick and I was never skinny so I was like this is why is this not working? You can't ever see health. And it might seem like on Instagram and platforms like that, that you can judge someone purely by their physique, but you really

can't, you have no idea what someone's eating, what they're doing. Everyone's body reacts very differently. You can't judge a book by its cover. And I think when you mentioned that you're very open about the struggles you've had in the past with things and food and relationships with it, but it's the underlying things that are not spoken about, like your increased risk of bone density, problems with bone mineral densities. So that's osteopenia towards osteoporosis, which is actually a silent illness. And most people don't realize they have osteoporosis until they break a bone. And especially for any women listening, we're more predisposed to this what about thinking about lifespan so having an eating disorder unfortunately in most cases can even shorten lifespan depends how long you've had it

for menstruation fertility there's a lot of very important issues and when we're discussing food we go so purely sometimes on aesthetics and images. I mean, you mentioned social media and of course it's an image based platform. That's where problems stem from because if you're looking at one person's food, they may not have eaten it that day. You know, they may have eaten it the day before, or it may have been, you don't know what the rest of the picture's looking like. So that's another thing I kind of wanted to talk about, I guess, because of going back to the kind of orthodoxxia idea because we see these people and probably myself adding to this with very healthy lifestyles and doing a lot of exercise and eating really well

how could someone know maybe if they're actually because I would assume that a lot of people maybe actually have a very disordered relationship with food but don't really realize or what are the kind of key signifiers that someone should look out for maybe if they need to readjust their way of thinking i think first of all not to compare your lives to other people online i mean i'm sure you hear this phrase a lot but genuinely like you just said people that live healthy lifestyles we should actually be encouraging that and not shaming it either so there's a level that if it's causing you anxiety that's a problem if you're questioning you anxiety, that's a problem. If you're questioning yourself and you don't feel quite right, and you're feeling like you are consumed

by thoughts of food and shape, like I said earlier, that is when it becomes a big problem. But the biggest thing about looking at your favorite social media influencer, let's say, or celebrity is that you will never ever see the whole picture and we actually everyone has a responsibility here the consumer that consumes social media has a responsibility the government has a responsibility to protect and the people putting the content out have an ethical responsibility as well to say hey if this worked for me it worked for me i can't promise this is going to work for you yeah and what if someone was say they feel like they're struggling with an eating disorder what is the what is the process that they should go through um ultimately the first point of call is your GP

so you need to head on into the doctor's surgery um hopefully have a very honest discussion with them and they're the people that are able to refer you to NHS services. Now, sometimes that isn't always going to be the case. Unfortunately, the waiting list for eating disorders can be up to three and a half years. Oh my gosh, because it's so rough. Yeah. I was at an event, I think late last year at Parliament for BEAT, the eating disorder charity, which is another good resource you can use. And those were the latest statistics. And that was was terrifying we just don't have enough funding and resources however the positive thing is there are websites like beat out they're doing their bit there's also the national center for eating disorders that people can go to there's the

samaritans phone line online charities there are places and people you can talk to but you need to find i would say the best advice is to find someone you can trust that you can speak to that's going to give you support so at the minute in terms of is it more rife amongst young girls or is that my own preconception well um that's an interesting one actually because I was looking at some stats earlier but men are also equally affected we think however females obviously report things more a hell of a lot more vocal but if we're looking at admissions as well we've definitely seen a rise of people going in so the nhs actually recently said that up to 6.4 percent of adults displayed signs of having an eating disorder not even coming in for an eating disorder and 25 of those were men that's so interesting yeah so it's

definitely on the rise because what i think i've noticed more and more is i've come from quite a disordered relationship with food to being i honestly genuinely think i have a fantastic relationship now that's lovely but going through that journey i've looked around and i've noticed my mom my sister every single friend that i have has got some weird funk with food and i i then see it but you can't people are so even i'll say to my mom she'll be like oh i'd like to lose a bit of weight and my job is literally a personal trainer i help people do this she'll go i'm just gonna cut up i need to stop eating bread ah carbs and i'm like mom it's not it's not the bread trust me i was like just eat to full oh i can't eat now and i'm sitting there and i'm like she knows that i know but she'd rather believe because she's so ingrained to believe that carbs are bad and bread is bad

it's like brainwashing in society and different generations so for our elders let's say it would be the fear of fat just as much as carbohydrate they will have followed all sorts of diets the f diet and all these different rosemary colony kind of workouts and programs unfortunately a lot of disordered eating behaviors come from family as well it's what i call a food script so it's kind of like a play of your life yeah or your food world so when you're growing up do you remember your mum eating separately to you or your dad do you remember what they'd eat at the dinner table words they'd use when you saw your family I mean I remember going to my nan when she was around and she'd be like oh you look like you've lost weight Rhiannon and that's how she would compliment me but the meaning the motive behind

it isn't a negative one. That's just the language that was used. Yeah. And my mum always used to be reading those magazines and picking which body shape she was. And she was always like an apple. Oh, okay. And she's still very, very conscious of her body. FanDuel Casino Daily Jackpots.

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i've realized if you're around people that talk about it too much it does start to get into your psyche you have to be and i feel bad because i did a bikini competition my god I can't imagine what it was like for my girls at uni when I was doing that because I was consciously constantly staring at my body I was tiny and I was for the sake of the thing trying to get leaner and leaner and leaner now for them to live with me I don't know how did you find out of interest um sorry I'm interviewing you now did you find when you did the bikini competition it was quite triggering I mean do you think that's a good idea for people that are quite vulnerable because I wouldn't no I don't think it's healthy for anyone I kind of fell into it because when I first got into fitness I had a PT that didn't give me that much food

and I just got really lean my body seemed to adapt very well to be like getting shredded so everyone and I was at uni in Wales it's quite big there so people said to me will you compete and I just kind of like oh okay and I did it it was so I it took me months it was funny enough that was the thing that got me out before that I'd always had quite a bad relationship with food but I got so so small so lean and I didn't feel any better yeah but it wasn't easy but then funnily enough that looking back then six months after I've done it I was like oh I don't need to be and I got over it yeah but I wouldn't necessarily say that you should go to the extreme to get there and I cannot tell you I was the smallest I've ever been I weighed like 52 kilos I weigh almost 70 now all the time and I

thought I was fat I couldn't see that i was small this okay so these are some interesting things that happen so when your body goes into a little bit of starvation you release endorphins naturally so your gut bacteria and you send all these signals to your brain and it secretes serotonin which is like your happy hormone so people that are often going through fasting for long periods of starvation or losing a lot of weight, they get this natural high from it as well. And also it can contribute to the dysmorphia. So what we call with the other voice, everyone's kind of got a voice in their head. And I discussed this a lot with eating disorder clients. Often we name the voice. So it becomes something maybe you didn't like in childhood or another voice that could be for me, let's say Rhiannon, the voice

could be Robert in my head. That could be male or female. I don't know. But that voice gets louder and louder when we're in times of famish or we need protecting and it almost takes over. And for people with eating disorders, that voice, it becomes hard to separate the person and the illness voice. That's what gets difficult. And without carbohydrates, and of course, when you were going through a phase where you were very lean, I'm guessing your sleep or you might have been exhausted or your sleep was disrupted and it was harder to get to sleep or you craved food over time i would i think i was so hungry before bed but i'd wake up so early because i'd be so hungry for breakfast yeah yeah so i'd go to sleep early but i'd be up at like four or five in the morning because your body's

telling you i mean carbs are the first the body's preferred source of fuel we can't forget that we have a blood-brain barrier that fats and protein don't go through as efficiently in the same way it has to go for another process to get there as carbs can and you've got to really look at the quality and quantity of a carbohydrate we seem to have demonized food groups that can contribute to eating disorders and i think it's a big problem i think it's a huge problem because i think what i never realized was, I was trying, and I know we say this on social media all the time, and I was trying to find the right diet.

There's no such thing as a good diet. No. No one's, I did the cabbage soup diet. I tried doing keto. I tried doing 5-2. I did everything under the sun. The only thing that worked was just exercising and eating well. And it sounds so stupid.

And I eat a lot of food. But it's not stupid. It's common sense. Yeah. Yeah. But what we're told is like, there's a, for some reason as well, I didn't want to do anything to get skinny. That was the weirdest.

I wanted to be skinny. That's my goal. But I didn't want to exercise. And I, I just, I used to, um, I spoke about this in my podcast with Charlie Cox. I used to wish that I could get ill to get skinny. It's so weird. I used to have a desire to want to be able to not eat yes and we were both saying how weird it is that you don't look for a positive way of getting there it's always by something

really like awful happening to get that or a quick fix yeah yeah whereas when actually working out and eating well even though i'm not the body shape i wanted to be your happiness basically all comes down to the fact that your happiness doesn't come from what you look like when you're happy in your own life you really won't care what your body looks like true and I think we just need more role models out there of every shape and size and I think there's such a problem that like you said we we wouldn't look like uh Kate Moss because when we don't we're not built like Kate Moss but when that's the image that's plastered everywhere for a different generation like our parents or someone else that's what people will aspire to and of course sometimes it's not even willpower i hear this a lot in my clinic oh i

don't have the willpower i'm like but you don't need to and it's not actually a willpower you are designed as a human being to have taste buds because you are meant to enjoy your food exactly it's survival yeah i think that's really important thing to point out as well some because the frustration i know you'll have friends i think it's like she doesn't even work out she's so small that's just your body will have a sitting point mine at the minute is just where it sits when i'm not really trying your body will do that you can't you can push it as much as you want and make it tight but it just simply won't stay there unless you make yourself super uncomfortable.

And that will translate into the rest of your life. There's no joy in being... There's no reason for you to feel the need to be small. No, of course. And I think not only being small, but being... So being underweight severely and being overweight is not the ideal for your health. Both are extreme ends of the spectrum. And it's finding a healthy balance, which doesn't not the ideal for your health both are extreme ends of the spectrum and it's finding a healthy balance which doesn't look the same for anyone health is

different i would define health differently to what you would probably define health to what everyone else sees health for someone it might be i had one portion of broccoli this week for us it might be i had an apple every day yeah you know it's very um perspective i can't even say the word today susceptible to you yeah is that right um subjective you can tell it's already been a long morning but no i think and i say this all the time but i think one of the best things to do and obviously i can't speak to anyone with an eating disorder but in life i think to any woman out there because i know that we struggle is to stop looking at how we can lose weight take things away take things out of our diet look how you can add exercise in add positivity add to your life by fueling if you try

and make everything about adding your brain is that simple that it sees a positive correlation it goes oh this is good so think what you can put in not what you can take out exactly but remember that it's a triangle approach so eating disorders or working on your relationship with food should involve a doctor a psychologist or psychiatrist and a nutrition professional that's the triangle approach i mean that speeds up recovery you can't really just do the nutrition without working on the other two elements it's so it's teamwork yeah good teamwork really good but um are there any other things that you think are important that we should talk about i think in general there's now so much research coming out that what we eat is obviously essential but also how we sleep how we move how we breathe

every day mindfulness there's a lot of talk about this holistic approach health and the human body is a 360 degree approach so even in clinic i set exercises self-care exercises for my clients just so they can focus on something else as a coping strategy that's not food but remembering that the gut microbiome and research we now have that says it's linked to mental health even and depression just as much what you eat helps your gut bacteria thrive. The diversity of the diet, the links between serotonin production, which I've discussed already, but if you have a carbohydrate in your diet or an amino acid, which is a building block of protein, and that's

called tryptophan. If you've got those two things together, you're going to produce a lot more happy hormone, serotonin. And that converts to something, I'm throwing off all these words, but that converts to melatonin and that helps regulate your circadian rhythms. And that's your sleep cycle. So food also affects sleep and sleep affects your appetite. So if you're not sleeping, you're sometimes you need to eat more the next day. Everything is so interlinked that you can't focus on one alone. Well, we're all chemicals, aren't we? So I guess every time you eat, it sends a message to a different part of your body.

Totally. And I think with food as well, it's really important that you, because it's so easy to want to follow someone else's diet or do something. But a really good thing to do, not to become obsessive, but just note down how you feel after you eat certain things. You might feel like, oh, I ate that and actually I was in a really good mood that day. Or you might feel like, I felt so shit the other day. I was so grumpy. And you'll look back and you realize you forgot to have lunch. That is exactly what I do with my clients in clinic. And it's what I put in my book,

actually. There's a whole chapter on this. If anyone has re-nourish, that's got a section where you can, the food diary tool, where you put it in, you put your mood, you put the food. Because some days when you're feeling let's say ibs symptoms is something a lot of people are experiencing a lot of the time it's stress it's not that you're intolerant to a food and in fact just to touch on tolerance test kits they're not really valid there's a reason we don't use them in the nhs and you can never get enough blood anyway from a prick that you need to you know fully analyze that's a whole other subject but that can lead into disordered food behaviors then you start to cut things out you're panicking you know it could come back so you're allergic to everything under the sun or

intolerant to something and actually you're not yeah because i was reading something about this it was like the amount you're intolerant could be so minute that it's not gonna cause you won't even notice it yeah yeah um but i do this even this morning it's really funny i went and trained with two of my girlfriends i was so moody and i had to i'm so sorry i've just realized i'm starving yeah i had a client in the morning and i hadn't had breakfast and i was so hungry yeah and i was actually being really pissy yeah and i really i just couldn't get happy and it's because i'm hungry i react really badly just hanger is real oh my goodness hanger is so so real one of the most common things i see like with my pt clients i try and talk to them about like how they eat and literally every girl that comes in they'll they will have this massive shame

around their body image so they'll eat healthy inverted commas in the day which means they won't basically have a salad at lunch oh i really have breakfast yeah we only have and it gets to 10 o'clock and they have like loads of food now there's no shame in them eating loads of food but the problem is that they're attaching a seek it's a cycle of like you're saying the restrict binge cycle and i don't care if someone wants to eat 600 grams of chocolate in the evening it's nothing to do with me i don't mind but if you're being mean towards your body like in terms of looking yourself in the mirror and saying i don't feel good enough and then using that as a crutch to prop you up and feel better that cycle is just oh i'm gonna perpetuate yeah it's gonna keep going and this is a when you said the salad things whenever i do a corporate wellness talk so sometimes i go

into offices and i teach the people there how to you know eat well for performance because it affects your mood and how you can concentrate i use this analogy of what do you think is the better meal and i ask them every time so i've got a diagram of a salad literally with leaves cucumbers some tomatoes that that's probably a bit of onion and then i've got a burger with chips like on the side with some ketchup everybody always goes straight to the salad when i'm like show of hands what's healthy whereas actually out of those two meals the burger and the chips gives 10 times more nutrition exactly than the leaves that's what you think about what it's adding to your diet you need to eat i have to like hammer this home with my clients i'm not i need you to eat. I have to hammer this home with my clients.

I'm like, I need you to eat. They come to the session, they're tired. I'm like, you haven't eaten enough. And I'll be like, you're, especially in terms of, if you want to feel body confident, you want to get in vertical tone, you need to fuel yourself because the performance you put into the gym is what's going to make you look and feel fab. And it's extra energy intake. Yeah, and your performance comes from the food.

So you need to make sure you're fueling yourself. Like I can't drum it in enough. It took me so long to not be scared of eating yeah well your brain alone uses roughly around i mean i don't really like using calories but they have a place and it uses around 600 calories from you literally doing nothing well it's funny because whenever i do something i don't know if this is legit if i do a podcast that's really emotionally overwhelming yeah i'm starving and exhausted. Like more than I would be if I went to the gym. No, totally. Totally. If I'm doing interviews, my brain is working. So any students out there studying or listening, there's a reason that you get hungry. Library snacks.

Library snacks. You need to fuel your brain completely. And I think when we're talking about eating disorders in general, if anyone is struggling or knows anyone, definitely seek help because it is possible to get the help they need. But like we just said, food is a vital component of life and it's not worth living the rest of your life in fear of something that is vitally important for you. Yeah, it's so true. And like, I know you want to talk a little bit at the end about social media, but bringing it back to that, if anyone you follow triggers you in any certain way or makes you feel any kind of negative emotion just unfollow them whether that's me anyone else yeah you need to be able to realize that that's your own personal like magazine to curate and you need to be able to look

through that and feel safe and not feel like your well-being is being threatened by comparison or anything else and I think because it can be such a big part of how we view ourselves and we are our phones are an extension of us now we're so everyone's so involved in social media so we do need to take it very seriously I mean sometimes a question I get asked a lot is oh what book should I be reading to help me you know what podcast I'm listening to and often if I know the person has a disordered relationship with food I'll say anything that is not related to food or not related to exercise because you need to be surrounding yourself

in a different environment right now. It can be, you may think it's helpful, but it may be the opposite. Because you might get, I guess you could get obsessed with someone else's idea of doing things. Totally. So you just have to find good ways

to fill yourself in other ways. Find what works for you. And I think just being responsible and taking responsibility for the, for the actions that we take every day. And it's hard. It's a hard world out there now. I mean, I didn't grow up with social media and when I was at uni studying nutrition, I didn't have Instagram or Twitter, you know, it was, it wasn't there. And nowadays it's, um, making me sound very old now as I'm speaking, but nowadays it is is it is like you say an extension of you yeah so just have some protective barriers in place i think yeah but

a time out there's an app isn't there that says how much time that you spend on your phone yeah you can get do you know i actually deleted it because it annoyed me i've never done it i got it because my boyfriend has it he's so good though he never, yeah, yeah. He sometimes makes his screen black and white. It makes you not want to go on it. You can make your whole phone come up in black and white. And it's so disengaging that it actually makes you... You would only go on it if you got a message or something. You wouldn't want to look at it.

It's weird. That's so clever. Yeah, the colour. It's just horrible. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I downloaded it. I can't remember what it's called now. You can definitely look it up.

And I just... Then again, I go on my phone for work. But I was so grossed out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was like so grossed out I can't actually no I mean there's us saying this but then there's the other flip side is that I do believe education is so empowering so the more that you know the more that you understand the more you can protect yourself exactly so there is definitely a fine line yeah for sure where can we find you if we want to follow you um well very easy these days um everywhere at re-tricians that's r-h-i-t-r-i-t-i-o-n i've also got a book um re-nourish a simple way to eat well that's kind of like a 50 nutrition bible so facts things you want to know about sugar alcohol eating

disorders having a session in clinic with me and at the back is like recipes yeah recipes amazing and then you've got have you got a new book coming out yeah there's um there's one with a lovely lovely man called ronnie o'sullivan who is a snooker champion which is incredible and we're discussing mental health and how he stays on top of his game and that's coming out in may next year but you'll hear a lot more about that soon that's so interesting so honestly this subject is fascinating and i'm so happy we're all talking about mental health more yeah it's so important thank you so much for coming on talking about it and remember guys if you do if anything in this you felt like might relate to you do make sure that you kind of go to a doctor or someone who knows what they're speaking about um and lots of people want to reach

out to influencers or even to like we really have about some nutrition or myself but we can't really give like generalized advice via social media so you have to make sure you kind of go into doctors or you know yeah yeah and just make sure that you make your health of the utmost important thank you so much for listening and i will see you next week bye Fandu Casino Daily Jackpots guaranteed to hit by 11 p.m. with your chance at the number one feeling winning which beats even the 27th best feeling, saying I do. Who wants this last parachute?

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